“I’m glad you feel that way,” said Wilfred kindly; “it’s the best thing you said to-night. Here’s your flash-light, Archie, go on down to the pavilion now.”
The outraged spectator of this complacent treason did not linger to be told again. He was not built for dignity and as he limped down the hill, his contempt, as expressed in his bearing, suggested only the sudden pique of a silly girl. In trying to be scornful he was absurd.
But Wilfred did not see him nor think of him, any more than he thought of the ants near his feet. He did not even ponder on the warning that duty must be done and the thing made public. He stood there alone in the darkness watching that black figure until it became a mere shadow and was then swallowed up in the still night. Still he watched where it had gone. Then he nervously brushed his rebellious lock of wavy hair up from his forehead and held his hand there as if to gather his thoughts. Then, in his abstraction and from force of habit, he felt his pocket to make sure the old opera-glass, his one poor possession, was there.
Still he stood, rooted to the spot, bewildered at fate, but accepting it as he accepted everything, tolerantly, kindly. He could not bear now to enter the cabin. So he stood just where he was; it seemed to him that if he moved he would make matters worse, he knew not how....
Came then out of the darkness Sandwich, the camp dog, wagging his tail and pawing Wilfred’s feet and uttering no sound. How he knew that Wilfred was a scout it would be hard to say for the boy had no uniform. He did not linger more than long enough to pay his silent respect, then was off again upon his nocturnal prowling.
Wilfred stole up to the cabin but not quietly enough, for all his stealth, to enter unheard.
“It’s just I,” he said.
“Billy?” one asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought it was somebody after the flag,” said the voice.